Report 79

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Aesthetic value

Something I studied aeons ago surfaced today. It was whether beauty was intrinsic or instrumental to an object. Whether or not we value things for their beauty as 'ends in themselves' or as something that might be useful for a purpose. The two are not mutually exclusive of course. Someone might collect art as a an investment but that doesn't stop the collector from buying art that particularly appeals to his/her artistic taste. Applying this idea on a wider scale it could be said that the egoic mind tends to value things as being useful or not for its survival, and, seeing intrinsic value in others, not just in terms of how they could be useful to us, is something we move towards in our practice.